SOUND DESIGN IN FILMS

Sound design is a long procedure of research to create an audio setting that supports the action and engages the spectators. Sound is typically distributed into three essentials: the dialogue, the music and the sound effects. Typically, almost all sounds and/or music will be added in post-production.

The dialogue should be recorded as cleanly and crisply as possible, with a tweak of background noise, usually recorded with a boom. After getting a locked shot, directors usually hire a specific sound designer who crafts pre-defined effects for the film’s genre. Music is important in film as it can engage and manipulate certain emotions from the audience. Such as anxiety, pleasure and fear. Putting music over shots enhances the desired emotion from the shot, this could be racing heart, empathy etc. In the genre of horror and thriller, these effects are used extensively within sound design. Shock effects as well as frightening build-ups are very standard and work great.

 

DUNKIRK (2017) – sound design

Director – Christopher Nolan

Sound designer - Richard King

The soundtrack in Dunkirk is completely composed by Hans Zimmer, and the main goal is to keep up high tension throughout the whole film, from start to finish. In order to keep the audience engaged and on the edge of their seat, the challenges and emotions of the characters in the film are portrayed through the soundtrack. Hans Zimmer use of a continuous ticking noise in ‘The Mole’                              ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEc1uhdKRko ) over an overwhelming orchestra in order to create tension. Zimmer takes advantage of the Shepard Tone, which is an auditory illusion which makes the tone seem like it is constantly rising higher and higher, without actually rising at all. This creates the illusion of rising tension that carries the screenplay forward.

Nolan’s films are usually all about time, and Dunkirk focuses on the little time the soldiers have left, as the soldiers are left helpless as all they can do is wait, stranded and surrounded by the enemy. So constantly using the Shepard tone throughout the film makes the tension that comes with the context of the film intense.

In the film as a whole, there isn’t much dialogue in the script and this was because Christopher Nolan wanted to “approach the storytelling very much from a visual point of view, and an action-and-suspense point of view”. The fact that Dunkirk has very little and simple dialogue allows Nolan’s use of camera angles, body language, facial expressions and staging in Dunkirk’s storytelling to be even more highlighted. By just watching the events onscreen allow the audience members to really put themselves in the shoes of the soldier, due to great use of visuals both in portraying minor conflicts as well as in telling the story as a whole.